Domino Effect
by hollow echos
Summary: Tag to The Big Bang Job. There was a moment there in the park where Eliot had hinted that he had done some unforgivable things in his past. Parker helps remind Eliot that they've all done things they regret, what matters more is the people are today.


**Title:** Domino Effect  
**Genre: ** Angst, friendship fic  
**Word Count:** ~3,100  
**Rating:** PG-13 (language)  
**Pairings:** Eliot/Parker friendship  
**Warnings: **None  
**Summary:** Tag to The Big Bang Job. There was a moment there in the park where Eliot had hinted that he had done some unforgivable things in his past. Parker helps remind Eliot that they've all done things they regret, what matters more is the people are today. Written for ninedaysaqueen.

**Author's Note:** A huge shout out to rusting_roses for the rush beta job, thanks for fixing my silly errors (yes, even the ones I make in every single one of my fics without fail :P).

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"_**Every one of Moreau's men has innocent blood on their hands. Every one of them are worse than me. You think you know what I've done? The worst thing I ever did in my entire life I did for Damien Moreau and I-I'll never be clean of that," Eliot finished.**_

"_**What did you do?"**_

"_**Don't ask me that, Parker. Because if you ask me, I'm going to tell you. So please, don't ask me."**_

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**Domino Effect**

There were things that belonged to Parker alone. There was Bunny and her rappelling gear and the caches of solid gold bars she had hidden in secure vaults scattered across Europe. It hadn't always been this way. She had started with much less in her life, just the clothes on her back and a deceased mother and a drug-addict of a father. That had been a low point in her life, it was true, but she'd made it a point to accumulate much more wealth in the years that followed to make up for that deficit. If something caught her fancy all she had to do was wait until the sun set behind the horizon and the nighttime world opened up before her go out and take for herself the item she wanted. She used to have a lot less, but she had a lot more these days.

Parker had most of what she wanted in life. Well, more than what she wanted in certain areas. There were some things that she'd pay to get rid of. There were memories she'd pay to forget and some pretty ugly sins she'd pay to have scrubbed from her hands. Maybe that was why when the whole team was in the park there and they all had been grilling Eliot about working for Damien Moreau she'd remained silent for the most part. Eliot was being treated to a first row seat to his own personal inquisition, on trial by the people who were supposed to be his teammates. She'd slunk a little lower on the bench and focused very hard on pressing back the tears pricking in the corner of her eyes. Eliot was strong. She would've thought that Eliot could stand unabashed in the face of their hard questions. Parker knew she wasn't as good as Sophie for reading someone's emotions, but she recognized the wounded quality that bled into a voice when a person was hurting. And apparently Eliot's defenses hadn't been as thick as she'd thought.

As Hardison glared at their hitter for risking his life during the course of his ploy and Nate berated him for concealing crucial information, Parker had remained a silent observer for much of the exchange. Except for one moment, when she had slid to fill in the gap that arose when Eliot couldn't find the words to describe what he'd done. Heart aching, she'd asked him what he had done that could be so bad.

She had to admit that part of her was dreading Eliot's reponse.

Someone who thought himself older and wiser had told her that once that people sometimes shared their sorrows and it lifted a burden from their shoulders and distributed the leaden weight, a load far too heavy to be carried by one person alone. She'd tested the theory once, unintentionally, when a psychic had ripped the scab off her brother's death. But she hadn't felt better. She'd felt exposed. All through the night the others kept giving her these sideways glances like she was something fragile and poorly mended that might fall apart at any moment. She appreciated their gestures, the way that Eliot hadn't argued with her selection of cartoons to watch that night instead of football and he had cooked one of her favorite meals. It didn't change the hurt though;nothing could ever take that away. Despite how awkward the experience had been for her, she'd offered the opportunity to share to Eliot. Just because something didn't work for her didn't mean that it might not work for him.

He immediately rebuked the offer, saying that if she asked again, he would tell her. His gaze warned her not to, however. The stern lines of his face and his weary eyes promised that after that conversation she'd see him for the monster he saw in the mirror some mornings after the dead bodies had floated through his nightmares. She felt her own heartbeat quickening. He wasn't the only one with skeletons buried under the bed. If Eliot was so twisted up inside that he visibly shook at the mere mention of the crimes he'd committed in an earlier life, what did that make her? She'd killed during her earlier life too. The image of a ballooning fire maelstrom that blew out all of the windows came to mind.

It was much like a domino effect, right then. With the others dog piling him from various sides, berating him, blaming him, pleading with him to open up, he snapped the door close on all of them, the only way he knew how to preserve his sense of self in the face of such pain. It was sad, in a way, that this was his only coping mechanism, but then, she'd done the same. If Eliot had gone and broken down at that moment, she would've been doing the same right beside him. Seeing a friend's emotional injuries scraped raw like that, it dredged up the memories she preferred to keep buried in deepest cellars of her mind.

The worst thing he'd ever done…she didn't think she wanted to know what that was. She didn't need to add any more dark memories to her already burgeoning collection. So she'd let her silence speak for her and business had resumed and the con had moved forward. But that entire stilted exchange, it also brought a new light to a conversation she'd had with Eliot down in the bar after a particularly trying con.

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"_**Kill Hatherton? You can't. You're not that man anymore, Eliot," Sophie murmured in a distressed voice.**_

_**A few moments passed in silence. Eliot's gaze shifted from one teammate to the other, never pausing long enough to let any one of them read too far into his expression, perhaps hoping to shield the fear and regret that they might find there.**_

"_**He might have to be," Nate replied.**_

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**Several Months Earlier**

"You really dropped two guards down an air vent just because they interrupted your crime spree?" Eliot asked with a crooked grin on his face. It was a little less restrained than his normal one, his sober one. It made Parker want to give a grin in response. Apparently, giving Eliot a few beers made him a little slap happy. On nights such as these Parker usually stayed around just for the entertainment value. She'd even brought popcorn tonight; Hardison was working on hacking the NSA database. She was banking on some hilarious banter passing between a slightly tipsy Eliot and a highly-caffeinated and sleep-deprived Hardison.

What had actually happened had turned out much different than that. The NSA goons had found Hardison out early on in the evening and he'd had to shut down the operation for fear of them tracing the hack back to his location. Which had left her and Eliot alone in a bar booth after it closed up for the evening. He was already on his third beer.

"I told you, I didn't _drop _anyonedown any vent. One of them was actually small enough to follow me into the vent. If he didn't understand the occupational hazard that went along with that and slipped down a branching vent, that's his own issue, not mine," she said, raising her glass of Pepsi for another swallow before speaking again. "But it did serve him right. I only got out with one Picasso when I had gone in planning to steal three. I staked out that museum for _two weeks_ and ended up with very little to show for it. Karma is a wonderful thing sometimes," she said, grinning widely. "Screw me up and you get screwed over," she squealed excitedly. "I mean, you've never had something unexpected happen like that? Cons never go one hundred percent according to plan…"

He shrugged and tipped his empty bottle over on the polished table top, rolling it back and forth with his fingers. Parker stared down at those long fingers absently. "Things go wrong. It happens…sometimes innocent people get hurt even when you don't mean for it to happen," he finished, his voice trailing off to a barely audible murmur at the end and the loopy grin on his face hardened into an icy slate.

She noticed the change in his demeanor, but before she had a chance to ask him about it he was speaking again. "What about your guards, they were ok?"

She shrugged, looking away from Eliot's hands. "They had pulled the alarm, meaning half of the Paris police force was in route, I was lucky to get away with my one painting." She smiled then. "It was a lovely addition to my Paris vault."

"You mean to tell me you have vaults stashed in the major cities in Europe?" Eliot tilted his head, hair curling a little near his face, framing his face in just the perfect manner.

"Doesn't everyone?" she inquired skeptically.

And so their conversation had moved on in a different direction and Eliot's vague statement and stranger expression faded into the back of her mind. Why dwell on something that was obviously sad, something that had caused Eliot to frown at the mere memory, when there were such happier things to talk about, like successful cons and the rush of barely getting away by the skin of her teeth?

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"_**I'm protecting **_**you!"**_** Eliot snapped. "Last time I checked, that was my job."**_

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Parker didn't like the memory of that night anymore. Before the park, it had just been another good time with Eliot. They'd had a night to reminiscence on some of their finest cons and largest blunders. There were few other things she could bring to mind that were better than a night spent like that. Then that stuff at the park had happened and all of a sudden that night was cast in a much harsher light. It made her chest go tight.

It was like a bad aftertaste, now. Eliot had done some things, some very bad things and he had almost started talking about them. Maybe it would've been therapeutic for him under different circumstances. Instead, she'd seen just the clouds off in the distance, threatening her sunny afternoon, and she'd turned tail and run. She'd perhaps not initiated the conversation's curb in another direction, but she'd seen what Eliot had been doing in that. He had been hoping to cover up a revealing statement he'd made in a moment of inebriated judgment where his self-restraint wasn't in its peak form. Instead of looping the conversation back to that topic, instead of maybe prompting Eliot to talk about it a bit and see if that would help, she'd not only allowed for Eliot's diversion, but whole-heartedly embraced it.

After the psychic thing and her brother's death being revealed to the team via a second-rate cable TV show, Eliot had been there for her. She might've hated him for it a bit at the time, the way he didn't leave her side even when all she wanted was to curl up and lick her wounds in private. Despite her frustration at his presence, he had eased her apprehension. Instead of ordering in take-out Eliot had made her some of his home cooked food. Before he left for the evening he had pressed a piece of paper into her hand, his cell number. Not the work number they all had for communicating on cons, but the private one he kept for non-business matters. Eliot had given that to her, scrawled in his firm handwriting, and told her to call him if she needed anything, no matter how small.

Maybe that night Parker had been given the opportunity to do the same, to return the favor, and all she'd been able to do was turn away for a quick retreat. It was just that she had a lot of negative stuff in her life already. She chose to focus on the happier things: the holidays and the amusement park trips and splashing in the puddles in her yellow rain boots after a strong Boston storm. Why voluntarily retreat into that dark sticky muck when there was better stuff in the world?

Except Parker had neglected to remember how sometimes it was just a little thing that triggered her. Seeing a glass of water by the sink at Nate's place one time had dredged up the memory of her mom pouring her a glass of milk before bed. And that had snowballed into a memory of her dad going through meth withdrawal because he'd lost his job and couldn't afford to support his drug habits. He'd taken a knife and threatened her mother until she surrendered her meager pay check. He'd snatched it up with his twitching fingers and stumbled out the door in search of his dealer, leaving a twelve year old Parker to support her mother's shaking frame through a litany of 'he could've killed me. Oh God, he could've killed me,' repeated over and over again through the night.

Parker didn't choose to relive those moments. Eliot probably didn't either. When they were in the park and she felt her face growing hot and tears poking at the edge of her eyes, part of it had been sympathy for what Eliot was going through. Maybe part of it had been guilt for her inability to comfort Eliot in his time of need all those months ago.

Ultimately, it was just the briefest of moments. That opportunity had come and gone and she'd squandered it. It didn't mean that she couldn't do it right this time. Parker took a deep breath and raised her hand to knock on the door, completing the motion before she lost her courage to do so.

She scuffed her toe against the doormat until there was the sound of metal gears on the lock, Parker knew that noise anywhere, and the door opened to reveal a haggard looking Eliot. There were shadows hugging both of his eyes, a testament to a night with far too little sleep. "Parker?" he asked, blinking a few times. "What are you doing here?"

"I, uh, I brought you something. Can I come in?" she asked.

He slowly nodded, stepping aside to let her in. He looked wary and a bit nervous at Parker's sudden entrance. She didn't visit often, Eliot was the type of person who preferred to meet at Nate's or the bar, somewhere that was common ground for the whole team. He liked his privacy, but she'd been here from time to time to drop him off a newspaper to occupy his attention after an injury on the job. Then there were the secret times she visited to make sure his security was up to par, just in case. That wasn't as personal, though, since she did it for everyone. Them being safe made her safe. Thus far, Eliot's security had failed the fewest times. Last time she'd investigated, she had been hard pressed to contort her body just right to avoid triggering the alarm he'd positioned in the vent. Suffice to say, his security was top-notch and exactly what she would expect of him.

She crossed into the kitchen and dropped into one of the chairs at the counter. Eliot paced in after her and took up a position standing on the opposite side of the counter. He looked a bit strange in sweat pants and a t-shirt instead of his jeans and his hair looked a little disheveled, but he did an admirable job of acting like nothing was out of the ordinary.

"Well, what brings you out here?" Eliot asked with curiosity and maybe a bit of suspicion in his eyes.

She brought the paper bag she'd brought with her up to the counter top, nudging it across the table toward Eliot.

He cocked his head to the side, slightly, but accepted it and began unrolling the top edge where she'd gripped it in her sweaty palm on the way over. "What is this, Parker?"

"It's the security tapes from the warehouse. Nate mentioned in passing that there might be some stuff on there that you wouldn't want other people to see, so I stole them for you."

"Nate said he wouldn't say anything," he growled low in his throat. His eyes were wider now, more focused, and he'd stopped opening the bag, instead rolling the edges together again, sealing the tapes inside.

"Look, Parker, whatever you saw on those tapes…I'm not like that. There were just so many of them and they were threatening Nate and me with guns-"

She shook her head, cutting him off as she began to speak. "I didn't watch them, Eliot. Whatever happened in there is between you and whoever else was there," she took a breath. This wasn't something she was good at, this emotional stuff. She could try, though, she owed Eliot at least that much. "I know that we all have done things we regret. It really sucks when those things get spread around. This is so that doesn't happen."

Eliot let out a relieved sigh. "Thank you, Parker. Just…thanks."

She nodded, standing and pushing in the stool. "Well, I just came over to do that. I guess I should go now," she said, moving down the hallway and toward the door. Eliot trailed after her. When she had turned the door knob and went to pull it open he stopped the door with his foot. "Um, I know you might have other stuff to do. But you want to stick around for awhile? We could watch a movie or something…"

She smiled, gently shutting the door on the outside world and all of its complicated matters. As the two of them retreated toward the living room, they left behind their baggage that normally trailed in their wake. In that moment, all that existed were two friends, taking solace in one another's presence. They drew strength from each other to cover the festering wounds in their souls that had recently been torn asunder.

Perhaps even more than that, those wounds would actually begin to heal.

-THE END-

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